


To Cure My Lonesome Blood

by Venhedish



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Bottom Sam Winchester, Dubious Consent, First Time, Forbidden Love, Guilt, Guilty Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Pre-Season/Series 01, Pre-Stanford Era (Supernatural), Soulmates, Top Dean Winchester, Underage Sex, Weecest, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:40:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28007097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Venhedish/pseuds/Venhedish
Summary: Dean’s been sick since before either of them was born. The disease is incurable, written into his blood – the same blood he shares with his brother. If he’s not careful, the fever will spread like a fire and consume them both.A series of vignettes from Dean's perspective from the ages of 16 to 22.
Relationships: Dean Winchester/Other(s), Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Comments: 13
Kudos: 72





	To Cure My Lonesome Blood

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a borrowed lyric from [Twins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11-Tp_xWNvo), by Gem Club. Listen to it and join me in feeling many sad feels.
> 
> Beta'd by the extremely competent and erotically educated (also erotically competent) [Kalutyka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalutyka), whose favorite gas station snack is most certainly not pickled sausages.

The first time Dean notices it, Sam is losing hard at a game of football. They've been casing the church across the street from this big empty lot the locals generously call a park, waiting for the wolf-in-priest's clothing to show his face. Dad's parked in the Impala down the side alley, so Dean's taking the full force of Sam's petulant sighing without backup. The kid's been bored out of his mind all afternoon, driving Dean crazy swinging his skinny legs and scuffing his sneakers on the concrete pad the park's one lonely bench sits bolted to.

When a group of local kids shows up in a whirlwind of wild preteen noise, tossing a ball and hitting each other with sticks, Sam gives him those stupid fucking eyes, the ones that say, "Can I, please?" all summer green and innocent. The ones that always work.

Dean nods once, and he's off like a shot, long limbs snapping. He's barely half the size of the other kids, thin as a reed, and at that awkward age where his feet seem to wobble under him like a newborn foal every time he changes direction.

He ends up at the bottom of a tackle more than once. Dean keeps an eye on him, makes sure he's not gonna end up concussed. He watches the high, bright flush of Sam's cheeks, the damp of grass stains pressing his t-shirt into the sweat between his shoulder blades, and, unbidden, thinks about how alive he must smell. How hot and electric his mouth must taste.

Disgust and desire get crossed like mislabeled envelopes in his brain, waver at the base of his throat before he pushes them down, down, to swim in his belly and settle somewhere deep and animal in the pit of his stomach. Instead of the acid taste of vomit as his mouth floods with saliva at the thought of his kid brother _like that_ , he tastes the bright, coppery shock of his blood, spilling over his tongue from the lip he hasn't realized he's torn to shreds with his teeth. Sam is twelve.

After, he does his best to keep himself busy—no time for little kid games when he's learning Latin and obsessively running drills, breaking apart and reassembling every gun in their arsenal until he hears the clicks and snaps of them coming apart in his dreams. He fools around with Missy Gundersen behind the bleachers after algebra. She has these perfect green eyes, and when they pick up and move on to a new town six weeks later, he realizes that's all he can remember about her.

***

The next time, it's worse. Sam crawls into his bed after another nightmare, this one bad: half-whispered confessions of fire and yellow eyes and the stench of sulfur. He's beyond too old for it—they both know it, but dad is gone again and his prime directive is to protect Sammy, always protect Sammy. He shoves over on the musty motel mattress, lifting the bedspread in silent supplication. Sam slips in easy, fits their bodies together, and breathes warm little puffs of air against Dean's adam's apple until he goes boneless and still, but sleep doesn't find Dean again for hours.

He wakes sweaty and confused with Sam's pliant little body draped across him, warm and soft. It's barely after dawn, the first rays of sun pushing their fingers through the crack in the heavy blackout curtains. Motes of dust hang suspended above the shaggy halo of Sam's hair. Dean's heart beats a sick rhythm in his chest as his eyes flick from the baby-soft peach fuzz on Sam's cheeks to the open, cherubic pout of his lips. His skin is golden in an unbroken line of sunlight from his jaw down to his neck, where it disappears under a faded Dio shirt that used to be Dean's. It shines like a beacon in the semi-dark, like an invitation.

Unable to stop himself, dick hard from more than just the circadian cycle of his biology, he licks a hot stripe across that sun-kissed meridian, tastes the salt of Sammy's nightmares, wants to eat them all. His face burns, and he almost expects to see his brother's skin turn angry and blistered from the venom of his disease.

Instead, Sam's eyes flicker open in dreamy confusion and Dean shoves himself out of bed like the blankets are on fire.

They never, ever speak of it.

***

 _Protect Sammy_ takes on a new meaning after that. He doesn't have the words to tell his brother why he withdraws, starts getting mean; it's just all he knows, all their dad has taught him. He hits Sam sometimes, now, when that shame-creature in his belly scents the air. When Sam sits too close, asks for too much, gets needy with Dean's personal space. Just a slap across the cheek: _Knock it off, dumbass. Don't make me, Sammy. I swear to God, I'll tear you a new one._ Sometimes it's an elbow to the ribs, kid shit. Just boys being boys. He hardly ever leaves a bruise. Their dad doesn't try to stop it, maybe even thinks it'll make them more efficient hunters in the long run.

 _Get away from me,_ Dean pleads to no one but the pumping chambers of his heart. _I'll hurt you worse if you let me._

Sam starts to take the hint, stops coming around so much to talk after school, to ask for help with homework he's smart enough to finish on his own.

Their worlds drift off course, cold bodies in space, still in orbit, but the force of their gravity weaker, more volatile.

***

When Sam is fourteen, Dean walks in on him masturbating for the first time. "Don't you know how to knock?" pounds in his skull like a migraine all night, even as he douses a harpy nest with gasoline and Sam takes a lighter to it, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, watching the blaze and feeling powerless against its heat.

He locks himself in the motel bathroom at four in the morning and touches himself to the memory, tension stiffening the muscles of Sam's body, carving him in marble. Of the brief moment their eyes met, before the surprise reached his brother's face and all that played across it was a private, desperate want. When he comes, he digs his nails so deeply into his thigh that it leaves bloody drags across his skin.

Sobs tear out of him in the cold dark; he bites his knuckles raw to keep his sin from leaking around the cracks in the door. He stays there, shaking against the grimy porcelain sink for so long that by the time his wrecked throat can emit only wet hiccups, the dawn birds have begun their fragile songs.

***

He's working a solo job in Tennessee, parked at a backwoods truck stop where there have been multiple sightings of a phantom hitchhiker, just waiting for some action, getting itchy to pull a trigger. It's a sticky summer night, and he can feel his sweat bead along the back of his neck, as uncomfortable and prickly as his mood. He half-watches as a kid saunters from trailer cab to trailer cab across the lot; he's wearing fishnets with heavy black combat boots under a pair of jean shorts, and his dark mop of hair shines greasy in the anemic yellow glow of the halogen lamps. Not Dean's thing. He eventually disappears into one of the trucks, and Dean forgets about it for a while.

When the kid emerges from the truck ten minutes later, though, Dean catches his face in relief for the first time. There's something about the hair, the slight frame, the gangly, too-long limbs.

He knows he's fucked before his hand even reaches for the door handle.

He crosses the lot in a daze, sleepwalking to his own execution. "Twenty bucks to suck your dick, handsome," the kid says, a consummate professional, but he's not really a kid. He's definitely older than Sam at fifteen, probably older than Dean, too, but he's got that dark, messy hair, and he's slim like Sam—what they call heroin chic—though he thinks it might be more than an expression in this case. There's an oversized safety pin hanging from one of his ears and it glints like a blade. He smiles, and his teeth glint, too. That's all it takes; with his mouth open like that, his dimples make his face go Sam-shaped. Dean swallows, nods, says, "Come on," and leads the kid to the public restroom around the back of the service station.

He's never done this before, with a boy. Never paid for it before, either. The kid's on his knees and pulling Dean's dick out of his jeans before he even has the chance to change his mind, inelegantly taking it in his mouth, bobbing his head forward and back the way Dean knows he's done hundreds of times—just business.

And he's rougher than the kid deserves, rougher by far than he likes, because every second doing this, for all the reasons he denies even to himself, is blurred by sick, molten shame. He fucks the mouth in front of him, fingers gripping hair, pulling too hard. He keeps his eyes closed through most of it, but towards the end they flutter open, just to see, to imagine, for one sacrilegious moment, that it's his brother's eyes that look back at him.

And the kid's hair, slick-stuck to a shiny forehead, his wet mouth, almost gagging every time Dean thrusts into it, is close enough, even though it really, really isn't. "God, Sammy," he bites out, not at all meaning to, as he comes thick and explosive down the back of his throat.

The kid pulls away, spits on the dirty tile of the bathroom floor, and moans, "Yeah, baby, call me Sammy. I'm your dirty little slut."

It's bad porn-talk, void of any desire, just the shit this guy thinks he's supposed to say to a John, fishing for a tip. Anger flares like a hot knife in Dean's chest.

So he hits him, a single sharp backhand across the face. No thought, just action. _You're not Sam, don't you ever fucking say his name, what have I done_. _Fuck._ He feels sick. The kid is too shocked to react, he just reaches up, eyes watering, and touches the spot where a pink mark is blooming across his pale skin. Dean zips his fly in a rush, bile rising. He rips his wallet out, shoves three crumpled twenties into the kid's hand, and flees.

He vomits in the pallid tangle of weeds growing in the corner of the cracked asphalt parking lot, the night cicadas making manifest the jangled, buzzing cry that began inside him years ago, the one that's been slowly shaking him apart.

The phantom hitchhiker never appears.

***

He wrecks the Impala not long after, wrecks his left arm and most of his ribs on that side, too. Dad is furious, leaves them with Bobby while they fit the car back together and Dean heals on the couch after two weeks in the hospital with too much fluid in his head and so many burst blood vessels in his left eye that the entire sclera turns a florid, hateful red.

Sam's suddenly around again, attending to him like a parent at the deathbed of a child, almost reverent in the attention he lavishes on his big brother. He seems desperate not to let Dean out of his sight, and Dean realizes an agonizing fear of death lurks behind his eyes when he catches Sam staring at him. He understands; they may have drifted from the anchor of each other, but the chain's still there, always leading back. What would happen if it snapped, if his other half was left to slip away on an alien current, never to return?

Late in the night, Bobby's snores drifting down to him on the couch, Sam pads out of the darkness like a ghost in bare feet and curls up against him, nose pressing into the cleft of his right armpit. Dean can tell his face is wet, little sniffles muffled in the cotton of his shirt.

"Hey, kid. It's okay," he whispers, letting his arm drape around Sam's shoulder, thumb rubbing a delicate circle on the skin below the hem of his shirtsleeve. Sam pushes his face deeper into Dean's side and shakes his head like a little kid; he's not, though, hasn't been for a long time.

"No," Sam says, talking into his brother's ribs, making the cage of him vibrate with his quiet desperation. "No, Dean. You can't die. You can't leave me alone here."

"Whoa, _whoa, Sammy,_ " His voice raises an octave, softens. He pulls his brother's head around to look at him, trembling. "I didn't die, okay? I'm right here." But Sam won't meet his gaze. "You wouldn't be alone, anyway. You've got Dad, Uncle Bobby."

Sam's eyes slide across his face like he's afraid to look too long, settles for looking down at his hands instead. "It's not the same, and you know it," he mumbles, barely loud enough for Dean to hear. He sniffs, wipes his nose, and grabs for Dean's hand hesitantly, like he's been dared to do it. He feels the heat of his brother’s skin as their palms slide together, wonders if he’s dreaming.

Agonizingly slow, like the eons-long shift of tectonic plates, Sam drags Dean's hand into the shared space between them. At first, he just holds it there, peers at it between wet lashes like it’s a puzzle, but then he brings it to his face, holds the back of it to his tear-stained cheek. Dean's eyes are suddenly wet, too. He takes a shaky breath in.

Sam's voice is nothing, just the impression of a desire too delicate to speak in words. "If you die, no one will be left to protect me."

Dean swallows. This little child-plea to be taken care of, a thing that Sam would never admit in the daylight, breaks him. His baby brother presses his face against Dean's hand, pulls it to his lips, and holds it there in a firm, open-mouthed kiss.

And then he's gone, Dean's hand dropping to the cushions, still warm from the weight of him.

He curls there, unmoving for long moments, trying to preserve the memory of the strange apparition. "Maybe I was dying to protect you," he whispers to the ceiling. "I tried, Sammy, I did."

***

Things fit back into their normal shapes for a while after Sam's late-night visit, another secret moment they share and never speak of. There's less hitting, more quiet musing about nothing in particular. It's not the way it once was, when they were kids and it was easier, but at least Dean can look at Sam and not want to set himself on fire.

***

When Sam is sixteen, It finally happens.

There's a fight, one of the worst Dean has ever witnessed. It blows in like a storm, building in a thunderhead of violence; Dad finds out Sam's been reaching out to colleges. The screaming turns bloody, Sam and Dad in each other's spaces. Sam shoves past Dad, moving like a wildcat, and Dad clocks him, hard.

His nose bursts into a spray of blood. He spits it on the carpet, feral, and curses the both of them, their whole family, tells them he can't wait to never see either of them ever again. He cuts across Dean at the door of their remote hunting cabin, eyes hard like flint waiting to be struck, but he says nothing, just disappears into the cold, gray winter.

Dean hesitates, but only for a moment. "Don't you dare," his dad growls. But Dean does the impossible: he disobeys.

"I can't believe you," he says, shaking his head, and follows after his brother.

It takes a while to catch up, but the beads of Sam's blood, half-frozen like holly berries in the undergrowth, make him easy to track through the thick New England forest that stretches for miles in every direction. There's a pack of werewolves out here, somewhere.

A thousand desperate thoughts ricochet inside his skull like a bullet. _He can't go, can't leave me, doesn't he understand that without him I don't exist. Fuck Dad, he doesn't matter, you just can't leave me, Sam, please._

When he finally catches sight of his brother, he's scrubbing at his nose with the sleeve of his ruined sweatshirt, perched on a fallen log. Dean knows he can hear him, isn't trying to sneak, but Sam doesn't look up, even when Dean steps up beside him, close enough for their breaths to escape them in the same white cloud.

"Come on, man," he says, offering Sam his hand. "It's cold as hell out here. Dad's probably gone out to the bar by now."

But Sam doesn't take his hand, doesn't move, just keeps wiping his nose—the lower half of his face a smear of pink and red—and scowling at the ground. "Go home, Dean," he says, voice low and even.

"Aw, Sammy, don't be like that." He's exasperated, throws his hands up, neck stretching back as if to ask the heavens if they’re seeing this shit.

Sam's laugh hits him like a punch in the gut, the derision sharp. " _Like what_ , Dean? Angry that Dad broke my nose?" He stands, and Dean is forced to remember that Sam is taller than him, now. He gets up in Dean's face, the blood smeared across his lips making him look even more like a rabid animal. "Or that you let him?"

Sam turns to leave him standing by the fallen log. "Don't follow me."

But Dean feels that familiar anger in his belly roil up. This can't be how it is for them. Sam needs to understand. "That's bullshit, Sam." He yells, voice like gravel. He matches his brother's strides and grabs him hard by the wrist, jerks him to a stop, needs to make him see. There's a desperate sense of the world balancing on a wire here, and it scares him.

Sam grunts, but Dean pulls his body hard to his chest. _Please, Sammy. I would follow you forever._ He holds Sam against him, incapable of articulating a single one of the feelings making his chest expand with need, any one of them insufficient to explain it. Hopes this is enough.

But Sam pushes against him after a minute. "Let go of me, Dean." His voice isn't particularly loud, but he's breathing heavy, and for some reason it fills Dean with a terrifying mixture of anger and want. Aching against his brother in the cold, it builds like a slick white heat at the back of his throat, almost choking him. His fingers tangle in Sam's hair, pull him even closer.

Sam struggles more, says, "Fuck you, get off me!"

 _I'm nothing without you, who am I without you. You can't. I can't let you._ Sam is pulling away, but Dean's fingers yank his dark hair back, up, exposing the bare white column of his brother's throat, adam's apple bobbing bright pink in the cold.

Sam manages to push him, unbalances them both, slams their bodies hard into the trunk of a thick, solid oak. The breath explodes out of Dean like a bark, and Sam slams a fist into his ribs at the moment his guard is down. But Dean yanks that beautiful head back, their bodies locked together from thigh to chest; Sam's hips are sharp against him and his mouth is parted, huffing little frightened breaths into his face. Everything freezes like this, like the two of them are suspended in amber, their easy violence preserved here for the rest of time.

He realizes they're both terrified; Sam's eyes are flicking back and forth like a prey animal, searching for an escape. Dean can see his pulse rabbiting in his neck like he's been caught in a trap. Dean thinks maybe he has. _We're just animals. And when the rabbits are scared, when the hutch door is left open, and mouths full of sharp, hungry teeth come calling, who can stop them?_

"I can't," Dean says, instead of _I'm sorry_ , or _you can't leave me,_ or _I love you,_ or the thousand other words that might stop it all right here in its tracks.

"What—" Sam bites out, but Dean is on him already, devouring. _So be it. It's been too late to stop this for years._

At first, Sam fights, beating ineffectively against Dean's chest, no real power in it. Dean takes him by the shoulders and spins them around, slams his brother into the tree, shoving their mouths together. Sam doesn't kiss him back so much as go pliant—wet, red lips parting for the hungry mouth that's suddenly all over him. Dean is wild, his blood up. His teeth are vicious, dragging over the copper-hot metallic taste of Sam's stained skin. Biting into his mouth, tongue desperate to taste him there, too. He groans in sharp, electric need.

He gets his hands under Sam's sweatshirt, hot skin against his frozen fingers. A sob rips from Sam like a death knell, and Dean thinks he may be dying, too. He sees himself as if through the wrong end of a telescope, small and distant. If he didn't feel so alive with the heat of this untamable need, he might think he was already dead.

 _Need to show you I need you. Make you understand._ He pushes into Sam, his full body borne on the sturdy frame of his brother, drags himself against his hips, shuddering when the friction lashes hot and sharp through his cock. He licks from Sam's mouth to his neck, remembers morning sunlight as vividly as a living dream. Sam's breaths keep catching in his throat, ragged at the edges. Dean wants to swallow them all.

His hands are sliding under the waistband of Sam's sweatpants, finding him half-hard through his underwear, feeling the hot wet spot where precome soaks into them. The overwhelming _indecency_ of it makes his entire body tense like he's going to come undone if he lets go, thinks any harder about his little brother's leaking cock, so he sucks a mark at the join between Sam's neck and shoulder and rocks in earnest, animal and raw, voice broken and coming from him in feverish gasps.

It begins to snow. They're both half-crying, and Dean notices tears freezing to the snowflakes that get caught in Sam's lashes. He's transfixed, watching Sam blink slow and unsure as he ruts against him. Dean can't look away; Sam can't meet his eyes. Anger rises again, quick as a snake bite. _Look at me, Sammy, please._ He tears his gaze away and finds that tender bruise at his neck again, bites hard, too hard, leaves a circle of little crescent shapes in his brother's virgin flesh. Sam's cry is ripped from him in a rush, keening and startled.

And now Sam is panting hard and fast in Dean's hair, like the armor of his fear has been shattered by his brother's sharp teeth. Dean feels the full length of Sam's cock straining through his pants, rucks one leg up and presses it into his crotch. Sam gasps and a hand comes up, grabs at the fabric of Dean's shirt. "Yeah, _Sammy,_ " Dean breathes.

It's a mistake; he knows as soon as the words escape him. Sam stills, the hand balled around his shirt tightens and then he pushes Dean, this time for real, and Dean goes sprawling onto the frozen ground, head inches away from colliding with the fallen tree. He's breathing hard, chest heaving, but he doesn't move, just stares up at Sam, who stands over him, lungs working just as hard as Dean's, the air around him crystallizing with each new breath.

They stay this way for an endless, terrified moment. Finally, Sam meets his gaze, expression unreadable. _I didn't want to drag you to hell with me, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,_ Dean thinks. _Please let him kill me. Let him kick my teeth in. Let him run home and tell Dad._

Instead, a decision point seems to pass behind Sam's eyes, unfathomably private and somehow unable to hide a single secret, not from his big brother, never from Dean.

It's obscene and absurd; Dean notices the head of Sam's dick poking out of his sweats, trapped by the waistband of his underwear, hanging low on his hips. It's flushed dark pink and alive with his brother's hot blood, just like the rest of him, pumping with teenage vitality in the freezing December air. He tries not to stare, wonders what it would be like if he put his mouth on it.

Sam drops to the ground in one fluid motion. He grabs Dean by the collar of his leather jacket and drags him up against the rough bark of the fallen tree. He straddles him, and Dean is glad for the return of his warmth, his familiar weight. Now Sam stares at him, eyes serious and searching. His hands come up to cup Dean's face, and Dean feels his breath still, afraid of what his brother can see behind his eyes. Finally, like succumbing to the inevitable, Sammy leans in and kisses him. It's gentle and halting, but their mouths are already hot with the taste of each other, and the tenderness of it turns raw and wild as Sam's tongue slides over his, wet and bright.

Sam's hands drop to Dean's lap—long, delicate fingers working at the buckle of his belt.

"Sam." Dean's voice is half warning, half desperation. _You can still run, turn back before it’s too late._

"Shut up." Sam bites around the shell of Dean's ear, pulling the belt open and starting on the button of his brother's jeans. "We could have talked about it _before._ But you chose this, so we're doing this."

And then Dean's cock is full and heavy in his brother's hand and Sam's mouth is slick on his again. Sam shimmies over him, sliding his sweatpants down until his cock is free, too, and he slides it over Dean's stomach, catches the backwards drag of it on Dean's cock until they're rutting together in Sam's hot grip.

"Oh, fuck," Dean groans, and it comes from that deep pit in his stomach, so blasted apart it's barely audible. He looks down and watches his brother fuck against him and a fist inside him clenches like molten iron. It won't take long.

But Sammy beats him there, pushes Dean's shirt up his chest, exposing the taut muscles of his stomach, and comes with a cry, startlingly warm on Dean's chilled skin, their foreheads pressed together. Dean feels the spasms of it pulse up from the root of Sam's cock, feels the drag of it in his balls.

Sam continues to work his hand along their cocks, canting his hips, watching Dean, almost curious, eyes glassy and blown wide. Dean watches, too, as he drags the thumb of his free hand through his own come on Dean's stomach, turns it deliberately, slow, and slides it across his brother's lips, marking him in his own arcane way.

It undoes him, undoes everything, shakes him apart until there's nothing left but the sheer rending force of his orgasm. He grips Sam to him, nails digging into the flesh of his shoulder blades, catches his brother’s mouth with his own and spills the wrenching sob of his destruction into it. He comes so hard his balls ache, shooting hot and messy across Sam's hand and his own stomach.

Even after, with the clarity of time and distance, Dean isn't sure whether he feels more relieved or frightened.

They stay this way for a time, sharing each other's space, afraid to move, afraid of what comes next. But a wolf howls somewhere far off and breaks the spell. They pull apart and head back home in silence.

***

Their relationship is different, after. No one else could notice, but it's there, imperceptible and lurking. Dad never apologizes and Sam never asks him to; their lives just move on, ugliness unspoken between them, the Winchester way. They still bicker the same, hunt the same, even goof around over bad movies the same, but they meet each other's eyes less, sit with legs and arms crossed, closed off, hearts unreachable.

Dean doesn't touch him again, even though the ache for it only grows under his skin like a fever as the months pass. And of course, Sam doesn't tell Dad, doesn't even ask to talk about it. Dean almost wishes he would, _almost._

The guilt still licks at him, though, roils in his gut any time Dad or Bobby or even, _christ,_ Pastor Jim brings up girls, asks little Sammy when he's finally going to get a girlfriend. But Sam is a late bloomer, shy and dedicated to his schoolwork. Dean fucking _hates_ that Sam looks straight at him when Bobby claps him on the shoulder one day and tells him, all good-natured, that he should just get the first kiss out of the way; no point making a big deal out of it—they're always a disaster.

For once, it's Dean who can't meet his eyes. He feels a part of himself fold inward as shame creeps up his cheeks. In his peripheral, Sam's face turns pensive, frowning.

Dean makes a hurried excuse and stays gone for a week, drunk for most of it. Dad tears him a new one when he finally staggers back.

***

Sam starts being gone more, too, out with friends, busy with extracurriculars, working part-time jobs. They stay settled for long enough that Sam even gets a date for his senior prom. Dad seems secretly relieved, takes a picture to mark the occasion.

She's pretty, like a smudge of blood-red lipstick on a napkin—deep and ephemeral, just Sam's type. Dean doesn't catch her name when Sam introduces them in the driveway of their rented Wyoming bungalow; the rush of blood in his ears is too loud. Dad throws him the keys to the Impala with a wink and a command not to be home too early.

Dean is working on beer number four when he finally hears the car pull into the driveway, and it's not too early at all, like he was shamefully hoping it might be. Dad's been asleep since midnight, infomercials selling mini blenders to no one in the living room. He can hear the engine idle, purring in the stillness of the night outside the kitchen window. He wonders if Sam brought the girl back here, if they're fooling around in the backseat like he still does, sometimes. He finishes the almost-full bottle in two deep gulps. He goes for another beer and just sits at the kitchen table, transfixed by that low rumble, unsure if it's coming from the car or inside his own head.

Still, Sam doesn't come in.

Dean shoves off from the table and goes to the door. He turns the handle slow and the spring breeze rushes past him. He's in plaid pajama bottoms and a t-shirt so faded he can't remember which band logo used to be emblazoned on it. It's warm enough out there, but the cold cut of the last remnants of a late winter wind makes him shiver. He steps out onto the front porch just to check, make sure everything's okay. He can't resist the need to _know_ anymore. The Impala's windows are up, impossible to see inside. No screams, no blood, not even the rhythmic rocking of the tires.

Satisfied enough that no one's dead in there, he turns to go back inside, but the sound of the passenger door handle clicking and the quiet hush as it swings outward stops him.

Nobody gets out, so he pads over, driveway warm on his bare feet, baked all day by the sun. Sam is sitting in the driver's seat, alone, bow-tie hanging loose around the open collar of his cheap tux, jacket a crumpled heap in the backseat. There's a bright wash of pink in his cheeks, tiny rivulets of moisture glinting in the glow from the porch light.

Dean leans down to get a better look at Sam through the picture frame of shiny metal and leather that is the passenger door. "She dump you, Sammy?" Dean ribs him, uncomfortable, not sure what the fuck else to say, as always.

"Get in," his brother says, and he does without question.

***

They drive in dark silence forever, and Dean has no idea where they're headed, if they're headed anywhere at all. Several times he senses that words are fighting with themselves in Sam's mouth, can see his jaw tic over them, teeth chew them apart, throat swallow them down. Whatever he means to say never quite seems to work its way out of the labyrinth of his brain.

But Dean's heard that talking in the car is easier, that it lowers the barriers between people, not feeling the obligation to look them in the eyes, having the freedom to fix your gaze on the horizon and pray for understanding as you barrel forward through space.

He's not sure he's even the one who needs to be talking, but he tries anyway.

"Sammy, this family, this life— it's poison. _I'm poison._ We've been fucked up in so many different ways for so long that there aren't any words big enough for it." He looks over at his baby brother, bars of light and darkness shifting over his features, mutable. "But you escaped it somehow." He drags in a shaky breath, clenches his fists against his thighs. "Until—" He chokes, takes a long moment to breathe in through his nose, "until I gave it to you.

" _There's something wrong with me,_ Sammy. I'm sick. I've been salting and burning it over and over just about my whole life, trying to keep you safe. I've done a piss poor job at it."

Sam is still, eyes never leaving the winding forest road leading them up, up somewhere Dean is terrified to discover. He doesn't seem to acknowledge that there's another soul in the car with him, knuckles white on the steering wheel.

Dean's voice breaks. "Jesus, Sammy. I'm so sorry, _more_ than sorry. If I could, I'd take every second of it back." He drags out a manic, wet laugh. "Hell, I'd throw myself off a bridge if it meant I never hurt you. I never—" he buries his face in his hands and the will to speak leaves him. He deflates like a balloon, suddenly very, very small.

Minutes pass this way. Sam drives on. The road beneath them turns to gravel and Dean finds his voice again, fragile as it is. "Something inside me just grew _wrong._ I'm so fucking broken over you, Sammy. How was I ever supposed to protect you when the one you needed protection from was me?"

The Impala begins to slow, tires spinning on the loose rock as they pass a faded wooden sign welcoming them to Deadman Peak lookout. Dean wonders if the name is an omen.

"Look," he adds finally, when Sam shifts the car into park, still silent as the grave. "You don't owe me a response. But I figure you drove us up here to say _something_ to me, so I'll keep my mouth shut until you speak your piece." He thinks about reaching over and patting Sam on the knee, brotherly and comforting. He doesn't. Instead, he opens the car door and steps into the heady, pine-resinous air of the mountain. The sharp edges of the gravel push into his feet as he rounds the Impala and settles against the hood, looking out over the dark valley that stretches below them.

***

Sam finally leaves the car, comes to join Dean. The entire universe of stars spills above them and the last silence before Sam's lips part threads into a blanket of breathless anticipation around them.

When Sam does speak, it's almost casual, as if they'd only ever been discussing their preferred gas station snacks.

"Sometimes, I think it was meant to be like this, you know." He's staring up at the sky, stars reflected in his eyes. "You and me, I mean."

Dean's breath catches in his chest, but he remains quiet, true to his word.

"You used to kiss me when I was little; I remember. Any time I cried, or when Dad was gone too long, or if we ran out of cereal." The noise that escapes him is half sob, half laugh. "You'd grab me and hug me tight and kiss my face all over until I laughed. I remember feeling like— like nothing could ever make me as happy as my big brother, treating me like the only thing in the world that mattered."

" _You were._ " Dean's voice is wrecked. He tries to bite it back, but it slips from him like all truths do, needing to be uttered.

Sam's silhouette nods, still looking skyward. "But then you started to get mean. You'd look at me and the love I used to catch in your eyes got shut away behind so much anger, Dean. You'd hit me when I wanted a hug, push me if I got too close. You were still someone's big brother, but you weren't mine anymore."

It hurts, hurts so deep that he wants to pull himself apart, but he only stares in wonder at his little brother—at all his beautiful, terrible words.

"And I didn't know, didn't have the words for it then, but I realize now," Sam's voice breaks, a hairline fault across the landscape of his honesty. "You hated yourself so damn much that I started to hate you, too."

Dean's knuckles are bone-white clutching the edge of the hood. His face is wet with tears; he didn't even realize he'd been crying.

"And then, in the woods ..." Sam pauses, maybe losing courage, maybe searching for the words. "You really messed me up. _God, Dean._ All I ever wanted was to please you, to bring you back to the way things used to be before you got angry all the time. And it's not like—" He pauses again, finally dropping his gaze and staring at his shiny black dress shoes. "Anyway. You messed me up, but _I messed you up, too."_

Dean shakes his head, violent and emphatic. " _No._ No, Sammy. You don't get to take that burden from me. You were a kid, _I_ did that to _you._ "

"Sometimes," Sam cuts him off, continues as if Dean hadn't spoken at all. "I feel like I was born in the wrong body." Slowly, he turns to look at Dean across the hood of the Impala, his eyes bright in the watery light of the moon. "Like I was supposed to be _you_. Or like, maybe we were always supposed to be one person. And you were just ... trying to fit us back together without knowing why."

"S _ammy ..."_

Sam stands, takes the two steps that put him directly in front of Dean, almost in the gap between his brother's legs, close enough to touch, but doesn't.

"She didn't dump me, you know. I dumped her."

Dean is almost entirely unsurprised; there's been a dawning of sweet, syrupy realization building in his stomach, in the same place his shame lives, since Sam first opened his mouth, but he says, "Why?" all the same, just to hear the words.

"Because she isn't you."

Dean can't tell which of them leans in first, only that Sam is all the way in his space, pushed up against him with his hands warm on Dean's thighs, and suddenly their mouths are on each other without preamble, desperate and exploratory. Sam bites at Dean's lower lip, sucks it into his mouth with a kind of muffled laugh, like he can't believe he's doing it.

And Dean's hands are all over Sam, dragging up and down his arms, pressing against his chest, sliding around the back of his head and crushing himself into the kiss. The tension bleeds out of him in waves, replaced with a sense of total, cataclysmic certainty that they would have always ended up here. Sam’s already hard, pressed between his thighs on the hood of the car, and the Earth is spread out like a picnic blanket beneath them, the stars crowding down to watch them collide.

Sam's hands are insistent at his hips, sliding under his ass and pulling him off the car to stand chest to chest. His sighs into Dean’s mouth like a prayer, then drops to his knees before him, a silent plea for benediction.

When Dean's hand reaches down, it's a fragile movement, slow and unsure. His fingers ghost into Sam's hair, feel the silk of it as he drags a long curl out of Sam's eyes.

"Want you, Dean," Sam whispers, pressing his nose against Dean's thigh.

Dean pets his brother's head and swallows wetly, cock aching at the simple truth of Sam's need. "Want you too, Sammy."

Sam reaches up and pulls the waistband of Dean's pajama bottoms down over his hips until the full length of his cock is exposed, heavy with desire. Suddenly everything is a thousand times more real, the lines of their bodies sharpening until everything looks like a photograph, a snapshot of their mutually assured destruction.

Then Sammy tilts his pretty face up and gives him those infuriating fucking eyes, the ones he's used to get exactly what he wants from Dean since he was just a kid. They ask, "Can I, please?"

Dean just about loses it, eyes sliding shut tight to ground himself and remember to breathe. When he blinks them open again, he pants, " _Jesus Christ,_ yes _._ "

Sam licks his lips, makes them shiny, and slides his tongue up the shaft of Dean's cock, hot and luxuriant. Dean's knees almost give out at the image. Like a filthy fucking Michelangelo, his brother's perfect mouth encloses him in its sacred darkness. He's slow at first, experimental, licking at the head, pressing the flat of his tongue against the slit, eyes flicking up over and over, watching Dean watch him.

"So good," Dean purrs out his praise. He slides his thumb across his brother's slick bottom lip, stilling him for a moment. Sam's little pink tongue pokes out, circles the pad of it, and sucks it into his mouth. "God, you make me crazy, Sammy." He moves his hand from Sam's lips to his hair, and his cock is back in his brother's mouth in one long wet slide. This time it's faster, more insistent. Sam's hand comes up and wraps around the base of Dean's cock, sliding along it in time with his mouth.

Dean forgets all of the words in the English language, except, " _yeah,_ " and he uses it over and over; it breaks out of him between desperate moans and ragged breaths. He's so fucking close.

But Sam stops with a single reverent kiss to the inside of his thigh, stands, and licks into his brother's mouth, letting him taste himself like an offering. Dean's cock throbs in time with his hammering heart as their tongues slide together.

Sam turns them until their places are reversed, keeps his mouth attached to Dean's, and begins to unbutton his dress shirt. Dean, uncertain, pulls back and hesitates at the collar of his own shirt, but the swimming vision of sharing the fever under his skin with his brother spurs him into action, clumsily pulling it free from his body and dropping it to the gravel. His hands, impatient, flash to Sam and help him work open the remaining buttons as they breathe against each other. The shirt slips from Sam's shoulders and Dean claims him in a kiss again, pressing their chests together, nipples peaked and sensitive, little pinpricks of pleasure where they slide against his brother’s skin.

"Dean," Sam whines, needy. "Dean, _please._ "

" _Anything,_ Sammy," Dean agrees before he even knows the question, bites Sam's earlobe.

Sam kicks his shoes and socks off, slides further back on the Impala and wraps his legs around Dean's hips. "Want you inside me," he keens, rocking against Dean. Color rises in his cheeks, but his eyes stay focused on Dean's face. "Wanna share your body."

Dean leans down over his brother, hands on either side of Sam's head, and catches the lingering self-conscious worry in his eyes. Dean kisses the corner of his mouth, his cheeks, his eyelids and collar bones, the hollow of his neck. " _Yes,_ " he breathes, "But I've never—"

"Me neither," says Sam, reassured that he hasn't crossed a line, as if that could be possible after sucking his big brother's cock in a parking lot. "But I have, uh—" He grunts and shifts forward, reaches into his back pocket and pulls a little packet out of his wallet.

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Is that ... _lube?"_

Sam flushes again, nods his head an embarrassed fraction. "It's _prom night,_ Dean. I just thought, you know ... just in case."

"Just in case you got lucky with your brother on the hood of a car?" He snorts, but takes the packet from Sam all the same.

"Well, yeah. _Maybe._ " Sam's smile is devious, and Dean kicks his pants the rest of the way down, steps out of them, and tears open a corner of the little packet with his teeth. Sam undoes his pants and slides them off in one fluid motion.

Suddenly they're both naked in the moonlight, stripped beyond even the bareness of their flesh. There are no barriers left between them, only the bone-deep devotion folding them both up in its mysterious tapestry.

Dean steps into his brother's orbit, smothers him with a kiss, and carefully slicks his fingers. "Tell me to stop and I promise I will, Sammy."

Sam hooks one thin arm around Dean's neck, pulls his face close, and whispers, "I only want you to promise to make me scream." A sob of feverish desire wrenches from him at his little brother's obscene words; his abs clench, cock bobbing wantonly in the space between them.

Dean leans close, shoves his tongue in Sam's ear, reaches down and drags a finger over the white-hot ring of muscle at the cleft of Sam's ass. " _Fuck,_ " he growls, "You've got a mouth, don't you?"

Sam pushes down onto Dean's circling finger, impatient. "For you," he purrs, all provocative-on-purpose, and Dean slides in, can't wait any more. It's so fucking hot, the walls of his brother around him, pulling him in deeper. Sam cries out, leans forward, one arm supporting him with a hand splayed against the Impala, and leaves wet marks all over Dean's chest, biting and squeezing his eyes shut when Dean curls his finger experimentally.

"Okay?" Dean pants into Sam's hair, working slow, dragging in and out in delicate come-hither motions.

Sam nods quickly, mouth still all over Dean's skin. "Okay," he pants back. So Dean pushes a little harder, a little faster, listens as his brother breaks apart underneath him in quiet whimpers. "Dean," he reaches up and drags his brother's face down to him, sticks his tongue in his mouth, sloppy with need, "Please."

"Yeah, _baby_ ," Dean slides a second finger in, "Yeah, Sammy, so good." He scissors them experimentally, fucks him faster when Sam squirms against him. His cock is leaking beads of precome now, close to the edge just from looking as Sam leans back on his hand and starts to stroke himself, chest covered in a thin sheen of sweat.

Sam's hand doesn't slow as his eyes reach Dean's, " _God,_ " he groans, pushing his ass onto Dean's hand, rolling his hips. "Need to feel you inside me."

 _Fuck, yes, anything for you. Need to know how we fit together._ His mind is reeling, nerves jangling in a chaotic mess of irrepressible desire, making him unsteady and drunk on his feet. He stumbles slightly as he pulls his fingers free from the heat of his brother and takes a step back to coat his cock with the rest of the lube from the packet.

Sam slips off the car, boneless, and turns his back to Dean, bending over the hood, legs splayed wide, supported by his elbows. His head is bowed and Dean can see a rivulet of sweat form between his shoulder blades and roll down his neck. He wants to taste it, so he does, bending over Sam's tight body and licking the salt-wet line of his perfect neck. "Gonna fuck you, Sammy," he says, barely managing to hold it together.

Sam can only manage a single, blasted, " _Yes,_ " and then Dean is pushing into him, one impossibly long slide into the fever-hot tightness of his brother's hole. It's every dream he's ever had, every single ecstasy he's ever conjured in the night-time shadows of motel rooms and the backseats of cars. Just Sam, his body a conduit for their shared existence, and just him, locked in place to create a greater sum than either of their hopeless parts.

Sam fucks back achingly slow, just once, testing their connection, and it drags a deep sob from Dean's chest. He wraps one arm around his brother's slim waist and plants the other on the hood. He slides in again, and out. Sam is making obscene noises beneath him, rolling his hips back, using his body to beg for more. Dean gives it to him, fucking him deep and fast, snapping his hips and digging his strong fingers into the tender flesh of Sam's stomach. He's balancing on the edge, knows he can't last much longer.

"Gonna come, Sammy _._ " His dick is throbbing, orgasm building deep down in his belly. Sam is too far gone to speak, just whimpering over and over in little broken _yeahs._ Dean slides his hand down the taught muscles of his brother's abdomen and grips his cock, lets him fuck his hand to the pace they've set. "Will you come for me?" he begs, teeth draging a mark over the curve of Sam's spine.

The cry that rips from Sam's mouth is entirely without language, just an animal noise of wayward, shattered desperation. His body tenses and Dean can feel his orgasm from the inside as his brother comes in hot, clenching waves.

It's more than enough to push Dean over the edge; he fucks into Sam's shaking body, losing rhythm, just needing the white-hot grip of Sam's ass around his cock. He comes with Sam's name on his lips, and it almost paralyzes him, legs threatening to collapse, so he clings tight to Sam and spills himself inside, riding the high with heaving breaths.

Sam's elbows give and his body slumps bonelessly onto the Impala's hood. Dean goes with him, no strength left. Eyes unfocused and heavy-lidded, Dean stares over his brother's shoulder at the infinite stretch of stars reflected in the mirror of dark metal beneath their tired bones.

***

After, when they're both half-dressed and resting against each other in the back seat of the Impala with the doors flung wide and the big sky alive all around them, Sam rubs his nose along Dean's neck and says, "I got accepted to Stanford."

Dean is quiet, but not surprised—his little brother is a bona fide genius, after all. He tilts his head to Sam's and kisses his forehead. "You gotta get out, Sammy. You gotta do it," he says, and it hurts in the way that only truth can.

"I know." Sam's voice is reluctant, searching for something, some impossible combination of words that will undermine his certainty. "Do you really want me to go?" He looks up at his big brother with the summer green eyes of an awkward twelve-year-old. "I would stay, you know, if you asked."

Dean presses his fingers into the soft spots between Sam's ribs, plays gently along them like piano keys. "I know you would," he whispers into Sam's hair; it smells like him, like woodsmoke and coffee, and home.

"I want you to stay all the way down to my bones, Sammy, but you’ve got to go anyway." He takes Sam's smooth chin between his fingers and lifts it to him, kisses his pliant, languid mouth. "Let me try to keep you safe, okay?" His vision blurs with tears that he won't allow to fall, and Sam's beautiful face swims before him in a kaleidoscope of old promises. "Let me get it right this time."

***

Somewhere in the distance of their dark mountain, a wolf howls and another answers its call.


End file.
